Amazon says this about the book: It is 1988. On a dead-end street in a run-down suburb there is a music shop that stands small and brightly lit, jam-packed with records of every kind. Like a beacon, the shop attracts the lonely, the sleepless, and the adrift; Frank, the shop’s owner, has a way of connecting his customers with just the piece of music they need. Then, one day, into his shop comes a beautiful young woman, Ilse Brauchmann, who asks Frank to teach her about music. Terrified of real closeness, Frank feels compelled to turn and run, yet he is drawn to this strangely still, mysterious woman with eyes as black as vinyl. But Ilse is not what she seems, and Frank has old wounds that threaten to reopen, as well as a past it seems he will never leave behind. Can a man who is so in tune with other people’s needs be so incapable of connecting with the one person who might save him? The journey that these two quirky, wonderful characters make in order to overcome their emotional baggage speaks to the healing power of music—and love—in this poignant, ultimately joyful work of fiction.

Monday, December 25, 2017

I'm not even sure if this has made it to the people I mailed it to yet (and I'm not done mailing either so apologies to those seeing it here before in their mailboxes but c'est la vie.

Did you think (or hope) I’d forgotten to write 2017’s Knox year in review? Although it hangs over my head like the sword of Damocles and one of these years it’s going to fall, this year is not that year. Your Christmas miracle will have to come from another source. Sorry, not sorry. Oh, and fair warning, there’s language in this one, because, well… Keep reading and you’ll understand.

January: On New Year’s Eve a stray cat wandered into our garage and showed no inclination to leave. We searched high and low for the family surely missing fat and friendly “Jasmine” but had no luck. On New Year’s Day we woke up to a flock of flamingos in our front yard. Another flock materialized the day after K. removed the first six. No one has ever claimed flocking us despite how much fun it is to say. K. went back to Minneapolis for her Great Group Reads gig this month and so got her annual dose of snow and cold out of the way early.

February: D. took a new position with Salesforce. He’s doing something with the health and wealth clouds. If you know what that means, you’ve got more than one up on K. (although she’s not averse to a wealth cloud around here at all). Also this month, we decided that “Jasmine” would officially be a K. The vet took one look at our enormous cat and said what a beautiful boy he was. Apparently in this case, a lack of dangly bits just meant he’d been neutered, not that he was a she. So Jasmine is now Jazz-man and is fat and mostly happy as an indoor cat. Gatsby, however, is less than happy with the new family member and is practicing tolerance, at least when we’re watching.

March: D.’s new position increased his travel a lot so we rarely saw him this month. T. turned 15 and started outdoor track. He didn’t get over the bar at all in the winter season but did make height for the first time this month. It’s totally amazing the amount you have to learn when your kid takes up an unlikely sport. You Tube sure helps although matching the parts of his vaults with the parts of Olympic caliber athletes’ vaults for comparison can be a real challenge.

April: W. turned 20 this month, leaving us with only two teenagers. We can’t possibly be old enough to have a child who is so very old. In other news proving our age, our baby, T., started behind the wheel this month. Appropriately enough, when the older two were home for Spring Break, K. forgot there would be another car in the driveway and she promptly backed into it on her way to picking T. up from his final behind the wheel. Our insurance was so very pleased with all of these new developments.

May: R. finished up her first year at college and promptly head up to Michigan to wait tables at the Les Cheneaux Culinary School. W. chose to stay at home and work in dad’s favorite bar, eventually becoming the expediter in the back of house so he didn’t have to talk to annoying people like his father and friends. Heehee. Meanwhile, K. went to Maine on a girls’ weekend and barely resisted bringing home much lobster or moose printed stuff.

June: Our most exciting month yet, K. found a dark spot that turned out to be a hole above the cabinets in the kitchen. She thought it might be from mice until W. flushed his toilet as she stood on the counter looking at the hole. Yes, we have had a shit waterfall behind the kitchen cabinets for who knows how long. We know you’re insanely jealous of this unusual and long hidden water feature, right? So started the nightmare that is still currently ongoing: destruction, disinfection, repair, and renovation of the kitchen. A shit waterfall, y’all. We considered stopping the letter here because what else is there to say? But we’ll soldier on. Oh and to prove what a loving wife K. is, she and T. went ahead and left for Michigan on schedule leaving the mess for D. to sort out.

July: While D. and W. worked at home in hot and muggy Charlotte and R. worked close to the cottage, K. and T. kicked back and enjoyed their free time in Michigan, swimming, sailing, and relaxing by the nightly fire. T. also went to Michigan State for a pole vault camp this month. He was inordinately pleased by the fact that his hands blistered so badly that he had gauze mittens on his hands when K. picked him up. This is some sort of badge of honor or something. Teenage boys are weird!

August: D. and W. got to come to Michigan for a brief week of vacation before heading back to work. T. sailed in the Sunfish Regatta again and got second place this year. He’s either improving or he got lucky. Your choice. We had to head home to Charlotte so W. and R. could head back to college for their junior and sophomore years respectively and T. could start his sophomore year of high school. When we got home we realized the house is waging a war against us…and winning. Mold on several ceilings, a burning smell that turned out to be the furnace dying, and still working on fixing the shit waterfall, coming home was so pleasant. Not.

September: R. turned 19 this month, adding to the evidence that we’re definitely old. We went up to High Point for Family Weekend but we only got to see W. as R. had gone off to spend the weekend with a friend. It’s like we embarrass her or something!

October: K. was lucky enough to spend a week in Italy with her parents and sister this month. (Nothing like horning in on her sister’s belated birthday trip!) Only the W.s could have so many bathroom related disasters in one trip but on the plus side, they all know how to say toilet paper in Italian now. In more K. travel news, she headed to New York City this month for the WNBA’s 100th anniversary celebration. If you have to ask anything besides how many bookstores she visited while she was there, you clearly don’t know her all that well.

November: The house thought we’d gotten a little complacent so this month we found rotten windows that needed to be replaced. 14 windows and 2 doors later… Oh, and the kitchen renovation is still moving at a snail’s pace. ::sigh:: T. spent this month in rehearsals for his latest play, Triple Blind Date and juggling his acting with indoor track. We weren’t fooled by the indoor moniker this year though, knowing up front it’s all polar bear all the time.

As 2017 comes to a close, we hope that all of you are surrounded by family, peace, love, and happiness now and throughout the coming year.

The Lake House by Kate Morton
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors
Murder for Christmas by Francis Duncan

Reviews posted this week:

nothing

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner
Meantime by Katharine Noel
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
So Much Blue by Perceval Everett
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorell
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell
How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
Between Them by Richard Ford
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Song of Two Worlds by Alan Lightman
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell
The Original Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
A Season of Ruin by Anna Bradley
Incontinent on the Continent by Jane Christmas
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
Sourdough by Robin Sloane
A Paris All Your Own edited by Eleanor Brown
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Living the Dream by Lauren Berry
Lawyer for the Dog by Lee Robinson
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Beginner's Guide to a Head-On Collision by Sebastian Matthews
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser
From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Shelter by Jung Yun
Books for Living by Will Schwalbe
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Piglettes by Clementine Beauvais
Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
Sunrise Canyon by Janet Dailey
The Brown Derby Plate by Marjorie Bowen
Embracing the Seasons by Gunilla Norris
Wicked Autumn by G.W. Malliett

The book is being released by John Scognamiglio Books on December 26, 2017.

Amazon says this about the book: Set in 1950s Louisiana, Mandy Mikulencak’s beautifully written and emotionally moving novel evokes both The Help and Dead Man Walking with the story of an unforgettable woman whose quest to provide meals for death row prisoners leads her into the secrets of her own past.

Many children have grown up in the shadow of Louisiana’s Greenmount State Penitentiary. Most of them—sons and daughters of corrections officers and staff—left the place as soon as they could. Yet Ginny Polk chose to come back to work as a prison cook. She knows the harsh reality of life within those walls—the cries of men being beaten, the lines of shuffling inmates chained together. Yet she has never seen them as monsters, not even the ones sentenced to execution. That’s why, among her duties, Ginny has taken on a special responsibility: preparing their last meals.

Pot roast or red beans and rice, coconut cake with seven-minute frosting or pork neck stew . . . whatever the men ask for Ginny prepares, even meeting with their heartbroken relatives to get each recipe just right. It’s her way of honoring their humanity, showing some compassion in their final hours. The prison board frowns upon the ritual, as does Roscoe Simms, Greenmount’s Warden. Her daddy’s best friend before he was murdered, Roscoe has always watched out for Ginny, and their friendship has evolved into something deep and unexpected. But when Ginny stumbles upon information about the man executed for killing her father, it leads to a series of dark and painful revelations.

Truth, justice, mercy—none of these are as simple as Ginny once believed. And the most shocking crimes may not be the ones committed out of anger or greed, but the sacrifices we make for love.

Monday, December 18, 2017

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date. I've been ridiculously sick and our house has had crisis after crisis keeping me busy so there's been about no reading or reviewing going on here and with everything I am so ridiculously behind on for Christmas, I don't anticipate next week being much better. :-(

The Lake House by Kate Morton
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors
Embracing the Seasons by Gunilla Norris
Murder for Christmas by Francis Duncan

Reviews posted this week:

nothing

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner
Meantime by Katharine Noel
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
So Much Blue by Perceval Everett
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorell
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell
How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
Between Them by Richard Ford
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Song of Two Worlds by Alan Lightman
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell
The Original Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
A Season of Ruin by Anna Bradley
Incontinent on the Continent by Jane Christmas
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
Sourdough by Robin Sloane
A Paris All Your Own edited by Eleanor Brown
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Living the Dream by Lauren Berry
Lawyer for the Dog by Lee Robinson
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Beginner's Guide to a Head-On Collision by Sebastian Matthews
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser
From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Shelter by Jung Yun
Books for Living by Will Schwalbe
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Piglettes by Clementine Beauvais
Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
Sunrise Canyon by Janet Dailey
The Brown Derby Plate by Marjorie Bowen

Amazon says this about the book: Set in the Carolinas in the 1940s, The Road to Bittersweet is a beautifully written, evocative account of a young woman reckoning not just with the unforgiving landscape, but with the rocky emotional terrain that leads from innocence to wisdom.

For fourteen-year-old Wallis Ann Stamper and her family, life in the Appalachian Mountains is simple and satisfying, though not for the tenderhearted. While her older sister, Laci—a mute, musically gifted savant—is constantly watched over and protected, Wallis Ann is as practical and sturdy as her name. When the Tuckasegee River bursts its banks, forcing them to flee in the middle of the night, those qualities save her life. But though her family is eventually reunited, the tragedy opens Wallis Ann’s eyes to a world beyond the creek that’s borne their name for generations.

Carrying what’s left of their possessions, the Stampers begin another perilous journey from their ruined home to the hill country of South Carolina. Wallis Ann’s blossoming friendship with Clayton, a high diving performer for a traveling show, sparks a new opportunity, and the family joins as a singing group. But Clayton’s attention to Laci drives a wedge between the two sisters. As jealousy and betrayal threaten to accomplish what hardship never could—divide the family for good—Wallis Ann makes a decision that will transform them all in unforeseeable ways . . .

Monday, December 11, 2017

Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Lake House by Kate Morton
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner
Meantime by Katharine Noel
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
So Much Blue by Perceval Everett
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorell
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell
How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
Between Them by Richard Ford
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Song of Two Worlds by Alan Lightman
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell
The Original Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
A Season of Ruin by Anna Bradley
Incontinent on the Continent by Jane Christmas
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
Sourdough by Robin Sloane
A Paris All Your Own edited by Eleanor Brown
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Living the Dream by Lauren Berry
Lawyer for the Dog by Lee Robinson
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Beginner's Guide to a Head-On Collision by Sebastian Matthews
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser
From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Shelter by Jung Yun
Books for Living by Will Schwalbe
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Piglettes by Clementine Beauvais
Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer

Thursday, December 7, 2017

When I lose something and cannot find it no matter how long I look, when I finally give up on it and consign it to memory only, it has always comforted me a little to think that the Borrowers, from Mary Norton's classic children's tale, have found it and are using it lovingly. But what if there was a person out there who collected and catalogued lost items with the aim of one day reuniting them with their owners and that person had my own lost object in his or her safe keeping? It would be comforting to think that my things were still out there, found and cared for, their stories preserved, until the time came for me to find them again. In a sense, that's the lovely premise of Ruth Hogan's novel, The Keeper of Lost Things. From a hair bobble to a single glove, a puzzle piece to a small, painted wooden house, these things and more are found and carefully kept, awaiting the day they can be returned to their rightful owners.

Anthony Peardew is an older man, once a celebrated author, who has lived alone for forty years in a magical sort of house, having lost Therese, the love of his life shortly before their wedding. After Therese's death he realized he'd lost the small communion medallion she gave him to always keep them connected and although he didn't find the small and meaningful charm, it inspired him to collect and safeguard other people's lost treasures. In his twilight years, he hires Laura, damaged and adrift after her divorce, to be his housekeeper and personal assistant, warning her to never go into his locked study. Never tempted to defy this order, she works contentedly for him for a handful of years. After his death, she is surprised to discover that he's left the house and all of his possessions to her. His major request accompanying this bequest is that she now go into the study, behold the immense, carefully catalogued collection of lost items he's found over the years and attempt to return them to their owners because if even one item's return will ease a broken heart, it will all have been worth it. As Laura slowly ventures out of her self-imposed isolation and befriends first Sunshine, a young woman in the neighborhood with Down's Syndrome and a special sensitivity to the things and vibrations around us that others never feel, and then Freddy, Anthony's gardener, she has to figure out how best to find the lovingly kept items' original owners, how to placate the ghost of Therese, who still haunts the house, and how to open her own heart to all the possibilities of living life to the fullest. In a parallel narrative, a young woman named Eunice applies for a job at a small publisher and promptly falls for her handsome boss, Bomber, becoming his best friend and confidante but never anything more. She devotes her life to loving Bomber knowing that he loves her back only Platonically.

The vast majority of the story is focused on Anthony, the past that led him to be the keeper of lost things, and then on Laura, who is herself very clearly one of Anthony's lost things. Each of the inanimate items highlighted in the book is given its own short story, but whether it is one written by Anthony or one contained in the item itself is left to the reader to decide. In order to cut some of the sweetness of the premise of the novel as a whole, these object stories veer from heartwarming to serious to desperately sad. There is a fair bit of humor woven into the novel to leaven it too. My favorite being after Laura hears neighborhood gossips in a local pub speculating on why Anthony left her the house. As she walks past their table leaving the pub, she informs them it was because of "Fellatio on Fridays." The fact that one of these nasty Nellys doesn't even know what this means makes it that much more entertaining. There are only very light touches (and a few hidden clues) almost connecting the story of Anthony with the story of Eunice and Bomber for the majority of the story and although they come together well in the end, a little more explicitness might not have been amiss so that the reader wasn't confused as to why these very different tales were together from the start. Both are thematically similar though, focused as they are on caring for and supporting those around you, accepting them for who they are and the struggles they face, and loving people, dogs, and the important bits and bobs of their life to the very end. Although there is a wistful sort of quality to the novel, it would be a perfect novel for those who are looking for a book to counter the dysfunction and unhappiness of so much of current literature. In the end, it is that elusive book that leaves a warm glow in its wake without resorting to sappiness or cliche. Very much a novel of love and loss, compassion and redemption, this is a gentle, charming, and thoroughly worthwhile read.

Monday, December 4, 2017

The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Piglettes by Clementine Beauvais

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors
Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner
Meantime by Katharine Noel
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
So Much Blue by Perceval Everett
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorell
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell
How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
Between Them by Richard Ford
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Song of Two Worlds by Alan Lightman
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell
The Original Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
A Season of Ruin by Anna Bradley
Incontinent on the Continent by Jane Christmas
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
Sourdough by Robin Sloane
A Paris All Your Own edited by Eleanor Brown
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Living the Dream by Lauren Berry
Lawyer for the Dog by Lee Robinson
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Beginner's Guide to a Head-On Collision by Sebastian Matthews
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser
From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Shelter by Jung Yun
Books for Living by Will Schwalbe
The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Piglettes by Clementine Beauvais

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Life transitions are hard. Good ones and sad ones, they are all stressful and loaded with emotion. Having a child is a big life change. So is moving homes. Both disrupt life and force change. Characters in Ashley Hay's new novel, A Hundred Small Lessons, are facing major life changes and taking stock of their lives in this lovely, quiet, character driven, domestic novel.

When elderly Elsie Gormley falls and breaks a hip, her children, in their seventies themselves, decide that after rehab she can't return to the house she's lived alone in for thirty-seven years, instead placing her in a local retirement home. Cut adrift from the house that carried the memories of most of her life, her marriage, her motherhood, and her widowhood, she starts to drift between past and present in her mind, losing her place in the present and reality slowly, so slowly. Lucy Kiss, her husband Ben, and their one year old son Tom have moved to Brisbane, the city of Ben's childhood, buying Elsie's home. Although they have lived all over the world, Lucy really struggles with the move to Brisbane, the distance from her family, and motherhood suddenly being her only job. As Lucy tries to settle in and make Elsie's house her own, she conjures up the old woman, whom she has never met, as a sort of touchstone or imagined friend. In fact, Lucy is certain that Elsie has come back to the house to watch her several times, a fixation Ben finds ridiculous and frustrating.

The story moves from Lucy's present to Elsie's remembering of the life she spent in the house with husband Clem and twins Don and Elaine. The switches in narrative focus are often triggered by Lucy finding something of Elsie's or of thinking that Elsie has looked in on the house. There is a slow and mesmerizing feel to the narrative as it focuses on snapshots of ordinary life and the small moments of that life. Both Lucy and Elsie face struggles with motherhood: Lucy with the isolation and vulnerability of raising a child and Elsie with the relationship she never could seem to get right with her daughter Elaine. The intersections and parallels, as well as the divergences, of Elsie and Lucy's lives weave throughout the novel, forming the backbone of the minimal plot. The writing here is lyrical and moody and the setting is beautifully evoked in all of its wet and close glory. A meditation on aging, motherhood, house as home, and the passing of time, this is a deep and nostalgic read.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Thrillers are not my usual reading choice. In fact, I don't think I've ever read one that I haven't been pushed to in one way or another. The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware, billed as the next Girl on the Train, would definitely not ever have been on my radar if my book club hadn't chosen it as our monthly book. And because I try to let book club push me out of my usual reading (sometimes), I gamely picked this up. Sadly, it confirmed that thrillers are not the genre for me.

Laura (Lo) Blacklock is a travel writer who can't quite commit all the way to her relationship with her boyfriend, Judah. Already struggling emotionally, Lo wakes up one night convinced that she isn't alone in her apartment. She's right. Traumatized by this terrifying home invasion, she jumps at the chance to get away by taking her boss's place on the maiden voyage of the Aurora, an exclusive luxury cruise ship traveling through the Norwegian fjords. The cruise ship only has ten guest cabins and is meant as an experience for the super rich after this first press junket. Still anxious and on edge as a result of the break-in, Lo is drinking too much and taking anxiety medication. When she hears a scream in the middle of the night and witnesses a person thrown overboard from the balcony beside hers, she is certain she's witnessed a murder. Except no guests or crew members are missing from the ship. Lo can't let it go, certain she saw what she saw, and she presses for an investigation even though, trapped on the ship as they are, the murderer must be among them.

Lo's increasingly paranoid first person account is interrupted every now and again by her boyfriend's worried emails, first to her and then to more and more people. The emails from Judah felt oddly out of place in the plot time line so instead of ramping up the tension, they were easily dismissed by the reader. In theory, given the plot, this novel should have been an amazing, tense, and thrilling tale, right? Well, there are some real problems with it. Although the reason Lo takes anxiety medication is well handled (the previous break-in), the fact that our heroine is constantly drunk to the point of being sick and is completely incautious about throwing around her murder theory, bumbling through an investigation, such as it is, make the story less intense. Sure, she's panicked and on edge after her own pre-cruise experience, but would a woman who is that traumatized seriously push back that hard on a murder no one else can corroborate? Add this unlikely scenario to the fact that Lo as a character is whiny and irritating and has zero aptitude as an investigator and you have a very unlikable, questionable main character. Lo may not be able to figure out the murderer until her back is against the wall, but the reader knows almost from their introduction on the page who it will be.

There were small irritants as well like Lo seeing the ship for the first time at the docks and noting how surprisingly small it was but then each and every time she entered a room on the boat, she remarked on how spacious it was, also commenting on the idea that she could get lost below decks. So was the boat large or small? It can't be both at once. And the coincidences. Puh-lease! (spoiler ahead--highlight the following blank if you want to see the text.) The guest who was supposed to be in cabin 10 stayed home because he too had a break-in occur at his house. Really? Worse yet, this is just coincidence and has nothing to do with the plot. One break in to establish a mental state works. A second one just to keep a character from appearing in the story, well honestly, that feels sloppy on the author's part. There's no other credible reason someone might skip a cruise? ::sigh:: On the plus side, there was a rising sense of claustrophobia that would be likely when you're trapped on a boat with a murderer and there's no phone or wifi to contact the outside world (although again, most boats nowadays use satellites to navigate so she really couldn't get a signal on her phone, ever?). And if the murderer was never in question, the actual details of the crime were in fact surprising, unlikely and out of the blue, but surprising nevertheless. Because of the first person narration, there were long repetitious stretches where we are told Lo's suspicions and then she repeats them again to the crew member assigned to help her question the crew in an unneeded by the reader second telling. The ending of the novel was frustrating (Lo's dimwittedness was on display again) and stretched belief (another spoiler ahead) (she plunged into the water forty feet--yes, forty feet *under* water--and had zero repercussions as she struggled to surface? That's five atmospheres down. Not a depth I'd want to hit without a decompression stop on the way up). Quite honestly the worst thing about this book for book club was that there was nothing in the book to discuss as a group so we were reduced to nitpicking at things like this. And others had other details that bothered them. Even before the meeting though, it hadn't been the most enjoyable read for me. But I am not a thriller reader. Perhaps those who enjoy the genre will have more success with this than I did if they can overlook the crazy plot holes, coincidences, and inaccuracies.

The book is being released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on December 5, 2017.

Amazon says this about the book: Ursula K. Le Guin on the absurdity of denying your age: “If I’m ninety and believe I’m forty-five, I’m headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub.”

On cultural perceptions of fantasy: “The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is ‘escapism’ an accusation of?”

On breakfast: “Eating an egg from the shell takes not only practice, but resolution, even courage, possibly willingness to commit crime.”

Ursula K. Le Guin has taken readers to imaginary worlds for decades. Now she’s in the last great frontier of life, old age, and exploring new literary territory: the blog, a forum where her voice—sharp, witty, as compassionate as it is critical—shines. No Time to Spare collects the best of Ursula’s online writing, presenting perfectly crystallized dispatches on what matters to her now, her concerns with this world, and her unceasing wonder at it: “How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.”

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

How do you define yourself? If you are a parent, does your sense of self rely on your children? If you are a daughter, are you defined by your parents? Do you identify with your professional self before anything else? Just who do you think you are and who do others think you are? What image do you present to the world? Edan Lepucki's twisty newest novel, Woman No. 17 addresses issues of identity, motherhood, art, and relationship.

Lady Daniels is the mother of two sons. Her oldest son Seth is 18 and completely nonverbal. She is careful to note that he is not autistic nor is he a genius; he's mute for no discernible physical reason. Devin, her younger son, is a chatty, busy toddler. She and her two boys live in a large and gracious home in the Hollywood Hills; her husband has recently moved out, at Lady's request, although he would like to reconcile. Lady is supposed to be writing a memoir but she needs help with Devin in order to find the time to write. When an ad for a nanny brings S Fowler (real name Esther Shapiro) into Lady's life, she quickly hires this young woman about whom she knows next to nothing. S is an artist who creates unconventional projects. Her latest performance piece is intentionally taking on her mother's persona, a fact she does not disclose to Lady. Nor does she disclose to Lady the growing connection she and Seth are developing. But S isn't the only one with secrets in the Daniels home. Lady has a few of them herself. Lady needs S, just as S needs Lady, so the reader knows early on that things can't possibly end well between them.

The novel's narration is first person and shifts between Lady and S, revealing secrets held and secrets told from two different perspectives. Both main characters are rather hard to like, being both self-destructive and self-absorbed. Both women make terrible choices in their unsettling and dysfunctional lives, a fact that leads to a rising feeling of unease as the book goes on. There are certainly moments of humor to lighten the strange obsession and dependence at play here and they are much appreciated moments for sure. The ending sort of fizzles out but the writing remains strong and unequivocal. A novel of what art reveals and what it hides, the facades we take on in our public lives and how they are stripped away in our private lives, this is an edgy and uncomfortable read but one that is strangely hypnotizing. Whether Lady takes advantage of S or if S takes advantage of Lady is something I'm still trying to figure out even as I'm glad I don't know either of these women in real life.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Monday, November 27, 2017

Books for Living by Will Schwalbe
A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner
Meantime by Katharine Noel
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
So Much Blue by Perceval Everett
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorell
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell
How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
Between Them by Richard Ford
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Song of Two Worlds by Alan Lightman
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell
The Original Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
A Season of Ruin by Anna Bradley
Incontinent on the Continent by Jane Christmas
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
Sourdough by Robin Sloane
A Paris All Your Own edited by Eleanor Brown
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Living the Dream by Lauren Berry
Lawyer for the Dog by Lee Robinson
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Beginner's Guide to a Head-On Collision by Sebastian Matthews
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser
From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Shelter by Jung Yun
Books for Living by Will Schwalbe
A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay

Friday, November 24, 2017

Most romances focus on the hero and heroine. M.C. Beaton's Emily Goes to Exeter, the first in the Travelling Matchmaker series, is not like most romances. Instead of centering on the couple at hand, this story takes as its main character Miss Hannah Pym, the long time housekeeper of the late Mr. Clarence of Thornton Hall. It's 1800 and Miss Pym is fascinated by the stage coach, "flying machines," that gallops past the estate every day on its way to Exeter. Upon receiving a bequest in Mr. Clarence's will and encouraged by his kindly brother, she can finally indulge her greatest romantic fantasy, travelling by said stage coach. She arranges her affairs and sets out on what turns into quite an adventure. When the coachman runs the coach into a rut and a storm blows in, the passengers of the coach are stranded at a local inn where the proprietor's wife is under the weather herself. Miss Pym proves to be a keen observer of human nature and a woman of action, taking charge of both the inn and her fellow passengers to keep things running smoothly. She has to contend with one spoiled society miss, badly disguised as a young man, trying to run away from the match her parents have made for her, the match himself, a widow fearful of life alone and the bully she's eloping with, a mild mannered lawyer, and several others as well. As she watches her fellow passengers, she quietly determines to help them along in their romantic lives.

Hannah is a mightily capable character. She's smart and compassionate and thinks the best of almost everyone. She's also a bit of a busybody and it's easy to see that she is perfect as an accidental matchmaker. Her delight in the little freedom that riding the stage coach gives her is infectious. The plot is full of hijinks and the story gives off a feel of true joie de vivre. There's nothing very complicated here and the brevity of the tale means that the other characters are of necessity sketched only in broad outlines but it's a short, light, and charming book for those who are looking for a little lovable sweetness in their historical romances.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Stephanie Laurens is one of the biggest names in historical romance, having been prolific for years. She's an "auto-buy" author for many romance fans with at least nine series so far. By far the longest of her series are the Cynster books about the Bar Cynster family. Arguably (there is a prequel written long after the original novel of the bunch) the first book in that series, published way back in 1998, is Devil's Bride about the 6th Duke of St. Ives and his chosen bride.

Sylvester, known to all and sundry as Devil, is the 6th Duke, head of this large and intimidating family. Honoria Prudence Anstruther-Wetherby is a finishing governess on her way to her latest post when, in advance of a coming storm, she stumbles across a young man who has been shot and is bleeding out. No shrinking violet, Honoria tries to stem the tide of blood but cannot do anything else for him until a dark, imposing man on horseback arrives and helps her get the injured man to a woodsman's cottage. The two spend the night in the cottage with the dying man, thoroughly compromising Honoria. In the morning, she learns that her companion throughout the night was Devil Cynster and the dead man, his young cousin Tolly. Devil is determined to marry the lovely governess but she has no intention of marrying him, coming as she does from a family that is his own family's equal. She dreams of traveling the world, seeing Egypt, and remaining free of any marital or maternal ties. But Devil is used to getting what he wants. She stays at his family home throughout the ensuing funeral, meeting and being seamlessly folded into the Cynster family so skillfully she cannot object mostly because she wants to find who murdered Tolly almost as much as the rest of the Cynster men. None of the other women know that he was murdered and Devil doesn't want Honoria anywhere close to the quiet investigation he and the others are conducting so, of course, she inserts herself as often as possible.

Devil is an autocratic and arrogant character. He never doubts that Honoria will eventually cave to his wishes and marry him. And in fact he generally does have the upper hand and plays her so that she has no choice but to fall in with what he wants. But if he is strong-willed and single-minded, so is she, and she fights for the information she wants from him even as she gives ground in other ways. The narration moves back and forth from Honoria to Devil so that the reader sees each move in this game from both perspectives. The sex scenes between these two not quite combatants, not quite lovers are incredibly steamy and if Devil's restraint in the bedroom, waiting for Honoria to agree to marriage, is a little unrealistic, the unfulfilled, or perhaps more accurately unconsummated, desire arcing between them does heighten the sexual tension as the story goes on. As this is the introduction to the Cynster clan, there is an enormous character list in this book and none of the secondary characters are all that well differentiated from the others, with the notable exception of the Dowager Duchess. Laurens introduces each of the family members with a light hand, perhaps in anticipation of them having their own books in the series, which they eventually do. The murderer is never in question in the book, requiring little in the way of uncovering plot lines for the reader. (The characters, on the other hand, are frustratingly blind to the truth right in front of them.) Without much of a mystery, the second half of the book is chock full of extended sex scenes, Devil demanding Honoria agree to what they clearly both want, and her silence on the matter, followed by more hot, sexy times, renewed demands, and more silence (repeat at will). There's a certain something about the book which makes it definitely feel of its time, perhaps the very alpha male hero or maybe the heroine who gives up long cherished dreams without a backwards glance once her hormones fire up, but I am willing to try another Cynster novel the next time I get the urge to read an historical romance and see how I like the rest of the family.

Amazon says this about the book: Inspired by antique photographs, these five stunning short stories capture the surprising intersections of love and friendship that alter life's journeys. In “Angels in Italy,” childhood friends, separated by circumstance, learn the enduring power of a first love. “Sister Flora's First Day of Freedom” introduces us to a young nun who makes a difficult decision to leave the sisterhood and finds delightful new riches in the big city of Edinburgh. The enchanting “Dear Ventriloquist” tells of a mishap at a Canadian circus that sparks unexpected magic between a gifted puppeteer and a dapper lion tamer. Changing a tire changes the life of a young Irish teacher in “The Woman with the Beautiful Car,” and a young New Zealander learns what matters in life from his grandfather, a WWII veteran, in “He Wanted to Believe in Tenderness.” These charming and poignant stories are a testament to the power of human connection and brim with a grace and humor that could only come from the pen of Alexander McCall Smith.

I had to read Leanne Dunic's slender book, To Love the Coming End, twice to get some sense of the tale contained within what others have called lyric prose. This was certainly not a traditional prose narrative, but rather a fragmentary collection of short meditations with a tenuous story running through them.

The unnamed narrator, an author, traveling to and remembering Japan, Singapore, and British Columbia, writes of loss and her missing or absent lover. She weaves heat, place, and the geological disaster of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in with this self-defining emptiness, this unrelenting void and explicitly draws the reader to the number eleven, not only as a date and a whole number itself but also as a figure of two ones, two people standing together and yet parallel, never coming together, separating in fact. There is a sense here of both connection to the natural world and a dislocation, a loneliness, and a sorrow of incompleteness as well. The language is confounding, hiding as much as it reveals. I had a difficult time connecting with the book. Many of the short, almost prose poems, felt like simply window dressing, a building of atmosphere for what, in the end, was a quite modest and even pedestrian story. Those who enjoy experimental prose/poetry will certainly enjoy this far more than I did, probably find more meaning in it, and can feel quite confident in their intellect surpassing mine as I've clearly struggled with this. Maybe on reads three or four I'd come to a better appreciation but I don't really want to try and tease out any additional meaning and that probably says it all.

The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors
Books for Living by Will Schwalbe

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner
Meantime by Katharine Noel
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
So Much Blue by Perceval Everett
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorell
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell
How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
Between Them by Richard Ford
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Song of Two Worlds by Alan Lightman
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell
The Original Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
A Season of Ruin by Anna Bradley
Incontinent on the Continent by Jane Christmas
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
Sourdough by Robin Sloane
A Paris All Your Own edited by Eleanor Brown
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Living the Dream by Lauren Berry
Lawyer for the Dog by Lee Robinson
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Beginner's Guide to a Head-On Collision by Sebastian Matthews
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
Emily Goes to Exeter by M.C. Beaton
The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser
From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Shelter by Jung Yun

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Recently I was asked to provide the title of a "lifetime" book that had the greatest impact on me and a brief explanation of that impact. Now if you're a lifetime reader, and I assume that most of you are, the list of books that you could use for this is not a short one. So the question then becomes, which one to use. Will you be judged for answering with less than an acknowledged classic? When I was in graduate school, a well-known professor asked each of us to tell the class about a book that had made us a reader. (Notice she didn't say "the" book, but "a" book. She was clearly a reader herself.) When it was my turn and I said that James A. Michener's Hawaii was a seminal work in my reading life, it was hard not to notice all of the (barely disguised) snorts of derision. And yes, it was clearly different than the rest of the canonical (and the more obtuse and confounding the better) works everyone else had cited but it was in fact a major influence on my reading. Should I have lied?* Even then I knew I shouldn't. Everyone has books, high brow and low that have shaped them but the impulse is surely to always go with the high brow, right? If you can overcome that gut reaction (and maybe you choose a high brow work anyway because it feels right to you), which part of your life should the book come from? Is there one that had a slightly bigger impact than the others on the list? Should you just choose the book whose impact you can most easily articulate? I considered many. Here are just a small sampling.

The Berenstain's B Book by Stan and Jan Berenstain was the first book I ever read by myself. I still remember the feeling of exhilaration of knowing I'd read it myself, running down to tell my mom, who was on the phone in the kitchen (I can still see her twirling the phone cord as she chatted to whomever was on the other end of the line), and insisting on reading it to her right that very moment. Even at that young age, I knew I had unlocked something special.

Socks by Beverly Cleary was the book I checked out of the school library again and again. Despite the fact that this was classed as a "third grade" book, I, a mere kindergartner, had special permission to check it out. I loved this story of the grey kitten with white socks so much I don't know if anyone else ever got the chance to check that book out that year. I can still see the cover of this much loved tale (which doesn't match anything I can find online, interestingly enough) and I wish there was a way for me to get my hands on the certainly long since destroyed library due date check out card I signed over and over again that year.

One of the oldest books I have on my shelf is Jane Eyre. I don't mean oldest in terms of first edition or publishing date but just in terms of which book I personally have owned the longest. My copy came from Scholastic books when I was in elementary school. And no, it's not an abridged version. I adored getting the newsletters that came home from school every month and I went through my copy very carefully, circling the books I really wanted. My parents were always very generous with books but even they had to draw the line somewhere and I remember being told that I had to narrow my choices down; I might or might not have circled close to everything in those pages. It was hard to do but obviously Jane Eyre made my final cut. I loved the book but I think I ordered it as much because it was long as for the story. (Side note: I loved the Scholastic newsletters when my kids were of an age to get them too and ordered not only what they were interested in but books I thought they should want to read because I would have wanted to read them if they existed when I was their ages.)

Like so many girls my age, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume was a revelation and as an adult, I wish I had never done those "I must, I must, I must increase my bust" exercises (if you read it, you know what I'm talking about). But what I remember most is not its matter of fact handling of puberty and the emotional aspect of it that felt so very universal, but instead I remember talking about the book with my best friend Jenni, who lived two doors down. I'm pretty sure we were discussing it in lowered voices (who knows why, as it wasn't a patch on Forever, which I read not long afterwards, for forbidden topics) when my younger sister, clearly overhearing us, wanted to know what a period was. I told her to go ask mom, never dreaming that she'd ask my mother such an embarrassing question. This was probably the last time I underestimated my sister. Her question earned me an our bodies ourselves talk about puberty and getting your period from my mother. Thank heavens mom (and Suzanne) never knew about Forever!

The World According to Garp by John Irving is the only book I ever hid from my parents. It was on their bookshelves and I have no idea exactly how I came across it since there was no dust jacket to tease me with the contents. (My dad has a thing about using the dust jacket as a bookmark and then throwing it away when he's finished with the book. Please direct all horrified hate mail his way and not to me as I already know this is a heinous crime against literature.) I don't remember how old I was but since I remember the room I read it in, I had to be somewhere between 9 and 14 when I read it. My mom did discover me reading it one day and took it away, replacing it with Henry James' Portrait of a Lady, and telling me that I was a little young for Garp. Since she just put it back on the shelf, I just took up reading it where I'd left off whenever I was home alone. (Sorry mom!) Maybe they were right to think I was too young to read it because to this day, more than a few decades since, I remember the sexy bits quite clearly.

But which book did I actually choose to highlight as the book that had a lifetime impact on me? Well, it was Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman. I pulled this off the shelf at my grandparents' house when I was probably a pre-teen and once I finished it, I sat up late into the night for weeks and not only imagined myself as the main character, sobbing at all the tragedy in my imagined life, but I kept the story going in my head long past what the authors had written. I've never actually been brave enough to read the sequel that was written not too many years ago because I still cherish the memory of my childhood visceral response so much.

Everyone should have these books, or ones like them in their lives. What books made you the reader you are?

*For those who need to know if the professor was one of those snorting with derision, she was not. In fact, she lectured the class on snobbery and informed everyone that it was best sellers like this that made it possible for other, less commercially viable, books to be published. She also mentioned that Michener himself funded a poetry prize that wouldn't have been possible if his books hadn't been wildly popular. I did not know this when I offered up Hawaii but it made me happy and my fellow students were properly chagrined at the news.

Friday, November 17, 2017

When it came out in the news a couple of years ago that there was a perfectly preserved apartment in Paris that had been closed up and untouched since WWII, it was such an intriguing piece of news. Why would someone walk away from their apartment, never to return? What was in this unexpected time capsule? Were the people dead and gone, victims of the war? Were they still alive but unable to face the memories of the place? The truth could have been anything. The romance of it was in imagining the story behind all of it. If in fact, the real story did come out, it wasn't covered in the news anywhere near as completely as the discovery itself was. Karen Swan imagined her own back story for an apartment like this, complete with a fabulously wealthy family, war crimes, amazing art treasures, and closely held secrets in her newest novel, The Paris Secret.

When the Vermeils, a wealthy and high profile French family, discover that they own an apartment in Paris that hasn't been opened since 1943, they call in a discreet fine arts agency to examine, catalog, and potentially sell whatever might be inside. A codicil to Mr. Vermeil's late father's will forbids Jacques and his wife from going into the apartment themselves until after both the late Francois' and his still very much alive wife's deaths. Flora Sykes is the fine arts agent assigned to the strange and intriguing find, made even more exciting when the apartment turns out to be filled with valuable art. It falls to Flora to trace the provenance on everything they discover, including a long lost Renoir and smaller pieces by other famous artists. As Flora chases down the history of the pieces, she is also dealing with a devastating family situation at home in England. The urgency and discretion required by both situations are overwhelming; luckily Flora is a professional. Although she cannot or will not share everything that is going on in her life, she does have some good friends in Paris to lean on for support. They come in particularly handy when she clashes repeatedly with the spoiled, angry, obnoxious, and badly behaved in every sense of the word, adult children of Jacques and Lilian, Xavier and Natascha. But if playboy, partier Xavier is truly so unpleasant, why is Flora so pulled to him?

Of course, the family is, or should be, of little consequence to her; she is working on the amazing art. Unfortunately she can get no further on the provenance of the art treasures than that they were last known to be sold to a notorious Nazi collaborator, a fact that renders them close to worthless despite their authenticity. Dogged in her determination to find the proof that the Vermeil family came to own these pieces honestly and not simply because desperate Jewish families sold the only things they had of any worth in an attempt to escape Hitler's genocide, Flora digs deep, uncovering secrets that the will's codicil was meant to forever hide, changing and then changing again the Vermeil family's knowledge of itself.

Anyone who knows the art world will immediately see the difficulty in finding a long abandoned stash of valuable art in Europe and have certain expectations regarding the plot of the novel. Swan has done a good job leading even the non-art savvy to the same conclusions and then to twist the plot a hair's breadth, writing a very different story than the one the reader expects. But that's not the end of her slight of hand as she is clearly a master of the unexpected. The family crisis that consumes Flora is very slowly revealed and its importance seems to be only in adding to Flora's stress level until it too is takes on rather more weight in the narrative. While Flora is well fleshed out, some of her motivations or actions are given a tad bit of a short shrift, and despite being an expert at her job and therefore used to dealing with impossibly large sums of money and the people who have it, she is strangely uncertain and occasionally even timid in most of the dealings highlighted in the book. The secondary characters do change the direction of the plot on several occasions but, for the most part, they remain fairly unrealized beyond these plot diversionary roles. The romantic connection is background rather than the main focus of the novel although it grows in importance as the story progresses. There are a few hiccups in the plot such as why, if the family has never stepped foot in the apartment or have any knowledge of what's inside, do they immediately call a fine arts dealer to inventory the contents and why is it so easy for serious and real trust issues to be overcome in the end (over a mere half page) simply by declaring "love"? Over all though, this is an engaging imagining of the story behind an abandoned apartment and an interesting look into the world of fine art and the detective work required to verify and trace it. Readers who love uncovering deeply buried secrets, those who want a small glimpse into the rarefied world of the super rich, and those with an interest in art will find this a worthwhile read.

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About Me

A voracious reader, fledgling runner, and full time kiddie chauffeur.
If anyone out there wants to send me books for review (oh please don't fro me in that briar patch!), you can contact me at whitreidsmama (at) yahoo (dot) com. If you do write me there, put the blog name in the subject line or I'm liable to send the unread message to spam. My book review policy can be found here.